Wanted: a new strategic alliance

Prepared Foods, April, 1990 by Daniel Best, Scott Hegenbart

It also consolidates the collective talents of MSU's School of Business, which analyzes deli market opportunities; the world-acclaimed School of Packaging, where work addresses extended shelf life packaging for perishable foods; the School of Food Science and Human Nutrition, which addresses food safety issues; and the Agricultural Experiment Station, where researchers investigate why vitamin-E feed supplements extend the shelf life of fish, beef, pork and turkey products.

MSU's crown jewel is the industry-supported School of Packaging which Professor Theron Downes describes as a "global packaging mecca." Major projects underway include investigations into flavor/packaging material interactions and the development of lumber substitutes from recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE) milk containers.

Distribution technology is a focus of MSU's School of Marketing and Transportation Administration.

"The U.S. food retailing industry lags other industries in how it handles merchandise," says Prof. Donald Bowersox. Bowersox envisions the day when entire food production, processing and distribution systems are vertically integrated through information nets. Noting an A.T. Kearney report stating that most Japanese food manufacturers are able to get products to retail within one day of processing, Bowersox suggests that American processors are highly vulnerable to foreign competition.

Other centers focus on processing technologies. New biological filtration systems, biodegradable packaging materials, supercritical fluid extraction and new ingredient fermentation technologies are current research objectives at MSU's Crop Bioprocessing Center.

MSU's grand experiment is not without challenges. Like other university R&D centers, the FII struggles to find an effective formula for researchers to gain peer recognition for proprietary, industry-directed research.

"We have to ask ourselves why we are performing research ... is if for our colleagues, our peers, or the food system?" asks Haines. At MSU, these are not incompatible objectives.